Nesting Bloom!

An amazing day for me, as its not everytime I can get to see 3 bird's nest in a row! Including the sunbird's nest I saw last time, I had saw 4 nests in NUS in a week!

An oriental white eye. A very chubby but tiny bird of maybe about 10cm. It was named due to its white ring surrounding the eye. Infact, its genus name of Zosterops means "girdle eye" in greek. It was nesting on a sea almond tree.

The common, but charismatic yellow vented bulbul. Nesting on a fern.

The stunningly beautiful pink-necked green pigeon, on a Simpoh-Air. Males are colorful with their characteristic pink neck while the females are uniformly green. (Update) Saw the female bird today, seems like they both taking turns to incubate?

Pereskia grandifolia

I was surprised when I passed by the shrubby Pereskia bleo again. I saw a flower, but eh, its not the typical rosy red flower that I saw some time back! More on Pereskia bleo

It has purple pink petals, yellow stamens (male parts) and white pistils (female parts). Totally different from the flower I saw previously. I had thought at first that this plant is monoeious (separate male and female flowers on a same plant) but it cant be since both reproductive organs are on a single flower. And won't be economical to produce 2 different flowers serving the same purpose I guess.

A search in the net shows that this flower belongs to another closely related cacti, Pereskia grandifolia (hope I din mis-ID). Looking more closely, its leaves do look different from Pereskia bleo, being more smooth and less wrinkled. Think my neighbor planted multiple mixture of seedlings causing them to grow so close together that I can't differentiate.

Pereskia grandifolia (also known as Rose Cactus) has similar medicinal properties as Pereskia bleo. This genus is widely known scientifically as being the primitive cacti genus that has not evolve to grow in arid conditions. This is seen by their persistant leaves and non-succulent, woody stems.

Trip to Sekudu

Wow, its indeed refreshing to smell the fresh seawater and the open sea. This will probably be the only time I can afford to go for more trips before my exams. hai..

Sekudu is one of my most wanted to see offshore islands, mm, mainly becos of the frog boulder (will talk abt it later). It lies close to Pulau Ubin and in visible range to Chek Jawa. Heard fr Ron that this trip was planned for the Republic Poly sea cucumber team who wanted to have a look here.

Some satellite images from Google Earth, showing the tiny island Pulau Sekudu at the South and part of Ubin up North with CJ at the East side of Ubin.

Scaling up, the place looks barren and practically lifeless, with only some large boulders visible. Well, but as the famous saying always goes, we shouldnt judge things by its surface. The frog island is teeming with life too.

Sun was not up when we reached, which me and Dickson was rather unprepared for (no torches). Luckiy Alvin lend us one and also the sun came soon after.

The first thing that caught my attention is this abandoned fish trap left there. On closer inspection, a dead file fish was found. Theres a live thunder crab in there too!

Ria suggested getting it out and we managed to get a small opening from the wire mesh. Then came the great battle as Ron tried to poke the creature out with the metal chopsticks. The ungrateful crab, kept snapping at Ron and Alvin but finally it was out, but still pretty tramatised, with its huge crushing pincers up and ready for another round of fight. Think that picture will be seen in tidechaser, wildfilms or blue heaven's blog soon.

Haiz :( Here was when I lost grip of my cam and the flash is gone..... My trusty compact cam.... Perhaps its an indication I should change to a new one. But still rather depressed abt it. +_+'' The pict above was taking later without flash and after the crab had calm down.

Also found a slug that Ron ID as the XXX seahare (to be confirm ;p). Seahares still have remains of a shell under their skin and internal gills, unlike nudibranchs. They also have 2 wavy sails along their back.

Another one that Alvin found wrapping itself tightly. Some strange yellowish insides sparked Ron's curosity.

A toadfish, in the same puddle with the seahare. Alvin tried to make a film of toadfish feeding by dropping a fish into the puddle but apparently it had no appetite that time, even wen we tried maneuver the fish towards it using the multi-purpose chopsticks (sux, still cant find where sells it).

fish bait for the toadfish

A pair of mating flower crabs just beside the seahare too.

Egg capsules of spiral melongena? Looks like it, with the notched tips.


A rather hairy filefish or leatherjacket. They were named due to their rough skin.

Fan Shells seems to be very common at sekudu. This bivalves have much of their tapered ends in the sand with only their razor sharp mouth sticking out. This is one sure reason to tell pple to wear footwear when visiting the intertidals. :)

Healthy signs of recovery. All the carpet anemones are looking well. And spotted quite a few miniature size baby carpets (placed my booties beside for a size gauge). Ron mentioned about the wealth of pencil sea urchins, blue sponges, nudibranchs before the freshwater impact from johor straits. Pity can't see them now.

Din really go all out to search for interesting stuff today cos kept fiddling with my camera to try to get it working. But as with all trips, always have a first time, like the seahare, filefish and crabs having sex.

Being my first trip here, of cos, I must pay a visit to the iconic frog statue in Sekudu. Pulau Sekudu, also known as frog island, is said to be named due to a swimming competition btw a pig, elephant and frog to reach Johor. All 3 animals did not make it and the frog turned into sekudu while the other 2 form Pulau Ubin.

Such a broad grin :D Sometimes vandalism does bring abt a sense of identity to a place doesn't it? Just as the "broken soul cliff" at Sentosa too.

And back to shore, where we had a short breakfast at Changi Village and I had to rush back school to prepare for my annual guitar concert. Man, marvellous concert it was (best in my 3 yrs in GENUS), as all the songs are pretty audience-friendly and dramatic. Now I wished I had forced some pple to go for it.

update>> hey my camera's flash is back!!! yeaaa